(photo: The Fundacion Catedral Santa Maria) Well known as a writer of international best sellers, Ken Follett was born in Wales and began his career as a newspaper reporter in Wales and in London. His first bestselling novel, The Eye of the Needle, won the Edgar Award and was adapted as a film. He followed this success with four more thrillers: Triple, The Key to Rebecca, The Man from St. Petersburg, and Lie Down with Lions. He surprised readers when he came out with an epic historical fiction novel in 1989, The PIllars of the Earth. It was on the NYTimes besteller list for 18 weeks. Now he's come out with a sequel to that successful book, World Without End, published by Dutton. Follett is also president of the Dyslexia Institute, a council member of the National Literacy Trust, and an amateur musician who plays bass guitar in a band called Damn Right I Got the Blues. He and his wife live in a rectory in Stevenage, 30 miles north of London, with two Labrador retrievers called Custard and Bess.
You were very established as a thriller writer when you published The Pillars of the Earth. What inspired you to take up historical fiction?
Pillars was inspired by the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. Every time I stood in one of these remarkable buildings, I would wonder: Why is it here? My book is the answer to that question.
The new sequel, World Without End, just came out, 18 years later. Why did we have to wait so long?
People have been asking me for a sequel almost since Pillars was first published, but it took me a long time to figure out what the sequel would be. I couldn't write another book about building a church, because that would have been too similar.
Some of the people in World Without End are descended from characters in the first book. Why did you choose to follow their stories?
By the end of Pillars, all the principal characters are at the end of their lives. So I decided to write about their descendants.
At the heart of the book is the plague known as the Black Death, the greatest pandemic ever. Why choose this backdrop for your novel?
I was looking for a grand theme to equal the theme of building a great cathedral. The Black Death was one of the greatest catastrophes ever to strike the human race. It killed at least a third of the population of Europe. It is also in some ways the turning point between the Middle Ages and the modern era.
You once said, "An awful lot of thriller writers write women ratherbadly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit." What have you learned over the years about writing female characters?
It's important not to think: "What would a woman do here?" because then you write a stereotype. I write female characters in exactly the same way as male: I think about the individual, not the gender.
Of the characters you*ve brought to life in your novels, who most resonates with you? Why?
I like Gwenda, because she gets what she wants against the odds, mainly by sheer determination.
Why did you decide to become a writer?
It was always the only thing I could do really well.
Which one book would you recommend today?
I just read Slam by Nick Hornby and I thought it was quite wonderful. I envy his ability to write about adolescents with such realism and compassion.
What do you think you would have been if you hadn't become a writer?
A bad guitarist.
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